Imagens da página
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[ocr errors]

L

and chiefly throug to tho canlesents Mandats. I shudder to add another und darin for

Fragment of De Quincey's MS. of "The Dark Interpreter "

infancy opmeyan chitton, I made the discouny: – Wigall man to mothers, to nurses, and отрицат also to philosophers — that the tears and Cementatin of that is, dang t par or so or so when they have as other language of complaint, mun through a gamut that is as invahaustite as ment and in this lampage the cremona of Raganini Ancar

ما

but moderatify
An-ear teamed

cannot deciind aw

Cannot

Impatience, of hunger of imitation,

[ocr errors]

вс тосто

The stomach

Storm of thes

how to the healthiest does with under some attack, which has the tiger greep of th oriental cholen, the yousik heer or moone that addrefs & their mothers and anguishe of suffliction that is might storm to heat of Simptome. Moloch. Once hearing it, you note nolforget it. Now it was geonstant remark of mine, after any natione (occusing suppon one à 2 mother / alway on the following day &. When a lay lay shopted cheed ewayt berkunf, and to himny oft decking, from to litte coituus hain, a smith expension had the ples in th inkluctul ppcuthics of attention, Armvation, ony medio quit midini and enemation. It was the cell of the port. hort . who on lishning & the saing and of the midnight storm and to cracking which it was making in the mighty woods, reminded himself that all in hall of houth

"Tills ales of right calm, this that mund

[ocr errors]

FROM "THE CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER."

The dream commenced with a music which now I often heard in dreams-a music of preparation and of awakening suspense; a music like the opening of the Coronation Anthem, and which, like that, gave the feeling of a vast march-of infinite cavalcades filing off-and the tread of innumerable armies. The morning was come of a mighty day—a day of crisis and of final hope for human nature, then suffering some mysterious eclipse, and labouring in some dread extremity. Somewhere, I knew not where-somehow, I knew not how-by some beings, I knew not whom-a battle, a strife, an agony, was conducting-was evolving like a great drama, or piece of music; with which my sympathy was the more insupportable from my confusion as to its place, its cause, its nature, and its possible issue. I, as is usual in dreams (where, of necessity, we make ourselves central to every movement), had the power, and yet had not the power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself, to will it; and yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. Deeper than ever plummet sounded" I lay inactive. Then, like a chorus, the passion deepened. Some greater interest was at stake; some mightier cause than ever yet the sword had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms: hurryings to and fro: trepidations of innumerable fugitives, I knew not whether from the good cause or the bad: darkness and lights: tempest and human faces; and at last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were worth all the world to me, and but a moment allowed,-and clasped hands, and heart-breaking partings, and then-everlasting farewells! and with a sigh, such as the caves of hell sighed when the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of death, the sound was reverberated-everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again reverberated--everlasting farewells!

[ocr errors]

And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud-"I will sleep no more!"

FROM "LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW."

The second sister is called Mater Suspiriorum-Our Lady of Sighs. She never scales the clouds, nor walks abroad upon the winds. She wears no diadem. And her eyes, if they were ever seen, would be neither sweet nor subtle; no man could read their story; they would be found filled with perishing dreams, and with wrecks of forgotten delirium. But she raises not her eyes; her head, on which sits a dilapidated turban, droops for ever, for ever fastens on the dust. She weeps not. She groans not. But she sighs inaudibly at intervals. Her sister, Madonna, is oftentimes stormy and frantic, raging in the highest against heaven, and demanding back her darlings. But Our Lady of Sighs never clamours, never defies, dreams not of rebellious aspirations. She is humble to abjectness. Hers is the meekness that belongs to the hopeless. Murmur she may, but it is in her sleep. Whisper she may, but it is to herself in the twilight. Mutter she does at times, but it is in solitary places that are desolate as she is desolate, in ruined cities, and when the sun has gone down to his rest. This sister is the visitor of the Pariah, of the Jew, of the bondsman to the oar in the Mediterranean galleys; and of the English criminal in Norfolk Island, blotted out from the books of remembrance in sweet far-off England; of the baffled penitent reverting his eyes for ever upon a solitary grave, which to him seems the altar overthrown of some past and bloody sacrifice, on which altar no oblations can now be availing, whether towards pardon that he might implore, or towards reparation that he might attempt. Every slave that at noonday looks up to the tropical sun with timid reproach, as he points with one hand to the earth, our general mother, but for him a stepmother,— as he points with the other hand to the Bible, our general teacher, but against him sealed and sequestered ;-every woman sitting in darkness, without love to shelter her head, or hope to illumine her solitude, because the heaven-born instincts kindling

Hazlitt

in her nature germs of holy affections which God implanted in her womanly bosom, having been stifled by social necessities, now burn sullenly to waste, like sepulchral lamps amongst the ancients; every nun defrauded of her unreturning May-time by wicked kinsmen, whom God will judge; every captive in every dungeon; all that are betrayed and all that are rejected outcasts by traditionary law, and children of hereditary disgrace, all these walk with Our Lady of Sighs. She also carries a key; but she needs it little. For her kingdom is chiefly amongst the tents of Shem, and the houseless vagrant of every clime. Yet in the very highest walks of man she finds chapels of her own; and even in glorious England there are some that, to the world, carry their heads as proudly as the reindeer, who yet secretly have received her mark upon their foreheads.

William Hazlitt (1778-1830) was the youngest son of the Rev. William Hazlitt, a Presbyterian minister from Tipperary, and of his wife, Grace Loftus,

the handsome daughter of a farmer. He was born at Maidstone on the 10th of April 1778. His father became a Unitarian, and travelled with his family in Ireland and America before settling in 1786 at Wem, in Shropshire, where young William was brought up in an atmosphere of radicalism and strenuous nonconformity. He was educated for the ministry at Hackney College, and was still preparing in his father's house, when a crisis in his life was brought about by the accident of a visit paid to Wem by S. T. Coleridge. The poet-orator absolutely bewitched young Hazlitt, who a few months later visited Coleridge and Wordsworth in the Quantocks, and was encouraged to begin to write. He seems to have lived without definite employment, however, until 1802, when he was induced to give himself to the study of painting as a profession. For this purpose he went to Paris and worked there for four months. The result was a number of portraits, some of which, curious and interesting specimens, survive. He returned, however, to literature, and in 1805 he published his first book, An Essay on the Principles of Human Actions, and he followed this up by certain anonymous pamphlets. In 1808 he married Sarah Stoddart, a friend of Charles and Mary Lamb, and on her little property at Winterslow, in Wilts, Hazlitt lived several unproductive years. It became necessary, however, to earn money, and in 1812 Hazlitt came to London, and began to take up lecturing and writing for the papers. From 1814 to 1830 he was almost a regular contributor to the Edinburgh Review. Mrs. Hazlitt had an "excellent disposition," but she was excessively trying in domestic intercourse, and their relations soon became strained. Now, in his fortieth year, Hazlitt published his first important book, Characters of Shakespeare's Plays (1817), and in 1818 he collected his theatrical articles in a volume called A View of the English Stage.

[graphic]

William Hazlitt From a Miniature by his brother

He was presently recognised as one of the best of living critics, and was invited. to deliver courses of lectures (1818-1821) on the poets. These were largely attended, and had a remarkable influence on cultivated opinion. Hazlitt's manner as a lecturer, we are told, was not precisely eloquent, but earnest, sturdy, and impressive. All this time Hazlitt had remained an enemy to privilege and tyranny, and, to prove himself still in possession of a manly spirit of liberty, he published in 1819 his Political Essays. This awakened the rage of the Tory press, and Hazlitt was persecuted by "Blackwood" and the "Quarterly." Many of his essays, and particularly the charming collections called Table Talk (1821-1822), were written "beside the blazing hearth" of a solitary coaching inn at The Hut, Winterslow, whither he loved more and more often to retire from the noise of London and the bickerings of his family circle. It was now

that this discomfort in marriage was intensified by the extraordinary and (it must be said) rather vulgar infatuation of Hazlitt for the daughter of a tailor called Walker, who kept lodgings in Southampton Buildings. He recorded this amazing episode in what De Quincey called "an explosion of frenzy," the Liber Amoris of 1823, a brilliantly-written analysis of an insane passion. He obtained a divorce " by Scotch law" from his wife, from whom, indeed, he had been separated since 1819, but he did not induce Sarah Walker to marry him. In 1824, however, he met in a coach and promptly married a widow, Mrs. Bridgewater, who had some money and with whom Hazlitt started on a tour of the galleries of Europe. At the close of it the second Mrs. Hazlitt declined to have anything more to say to him. He published many books about this time, and in particular The Spirit of the Age in 1825, which has been called "the harvest-home of Hazlitt's mind." Most of his productions of these years were issued without his name on the title-page. His largest work, The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte (1828-1830), was a disappointment to his admirers. His misfortunes gathered about him, and on the 18th of September 1830, an hour or two after bidding farewell to Charles Lamb, he died in lodgings in Soho. His posthumous essays were collected in 1850, under the title of Winterslow. Hazlitt had a handsome face, with curled dark hair, and bright eyes; but his gait was slouching and awkward, and his dress neglected. His own account of himself is, "I have loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy; but wanting that, have wanted everything." The student of Hazlitt's life will not be at a loss to know what that was; but perhaps he exaggerated his sense of its importance, since his last words were, "I have had a happy life."

[graphic]

House in York Street, Westminster, said to have been Milton's, occupied by Hazlitt

« AnteriorContinuar »